Sir! No Sir! Exposing and Debunking Military Lies from Vietnam to Iraq

Shutting down the machine - Speaking on a panel with Iraqi trade unionist.

This article, by Geoff Millard, was posted to the IVAW website, September 9, 2009

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It has been nearly four years sense my return from Iraq and yet some days I feel like I am still in the ROC at FOB Speicher. Last night was one of those nights.
As I sat and listened to the Iraqi trade unionist talk during part one of last nights program I was trying to balance listening to what they were saying with preparing my own remarks. I listened as they talked about lack of power, clean water, and security much the same as was the case four years ago while I was in Iraq. I heard these things but it was not their words that put me back there.
I kept nervously shuffling through my pocket and playing with my Washington DC drivers license. I felt the smooth edges and ran my fingers across the face until it reached a corner whose own face has begun to peel. As I flicked the peeling facade of my ID with my finger I looked up and was bad in the ROC. I could hear MAJ M not the presenter. I strained to hear through the crackle of the radio, not the interpreter.
A few minutes later I had to take the stage and try to tell the audience in our nations capital what IVAW was doing to end the occupations. More over I had to look these Iraqis in the eyes and say; "I was one of those who occupied your country. I am one of those that helped to kill your people. And this is what I am doing to try and make sure it ends."
I talked about the Field Organizing Program, the work it is and will be doing. I talked about the unique place that IVAW has in the antiwar movement. But, the entire time that those Iraqis stared up at me from the front row all I wanted to do was to scream my apologies, beg forgiveness, and plead with them until I no longer was associated with the occupation. I wanted to but what good would it have done? I may feel a bit better in the moment if a small group of Iraqis tells me that "it's ok" but unless I am ending the war I am not making it right.
When it comes down to it the reason why I do this work is because the best thing that we as veterans can do to help the people of Iraq is to get our friends home alive. They are not wanted there and every Iraqi I have ever met in my travels wishes for the same thing. The work that IVAW does to bring our brothers and sisters in arms home alive is the most important thing any of us can be doing. The small things that sometimes distract us are gone in the moment when face to face with a group of Iraqis that smile and welcome you despite the fact that I have helped to ruin their lives.
To morrow night these same Iraqis will have dinner at the IVAW DC house. Maybe then they will see that what I do now is with as much sorrow and regret as it is with love and solidarity.

Shutting down the machine - US Troops Hiding Out In Iraqi Homes

This article, by David SZwanson, was posted to Coastal Post Online, August 2009/p>

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A few words from U.S. troops in Iraq, all quoted in Chapter 1 of Dahr Jamail's brilliant new book "The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan":

"Oh yeah, we did search and avoid missions all the time. We would go to the end of our patrol route and set up camp on the top of a bridge and use it as an over-watch position. It was a common tactic. We would just sit there and observe rather than sweep. We would call in radio checks every hour and report that we were doing sweeps." -- Eli Wright
"Unit members would go and play soccer with Iraqi kids instead of going on patrol. I knew soldiers who learned to simulate vehicular movement on the computer screen, to create the impression of being on patrol." -- Josh Simpson
"Nearly each day they pull into a parking lot, drink soda, and shoot the cans. They pay Iraqi kids to bring them things and spread the word that they are not doing anything and to please leave them alone." -- Geoff Millard
"Our platoon sergeant, an E7, was with us and he knew our patrols were bullshit, just riding around to get blown up. We were at Camp Victory, at Baghdad International Airport. A lot of time we'd leave the main gate and come right back in another gate to the base where there's a big PX. They had a nice mess hall, and a Burger King. The BK is where we wanted to go and to the PX and look at DVDs and dirty magazines. We'd leave one guy at the Humvees to call in every hour, and we'd spend the full eight hours doing this." -- Cliff Hicks
"A big thing used to be squads putting up in some Iraqi's house for a day or two, just going there and staying. They insert themselves in a house covertly in order to watch a neighborhood without anyone knowing that they were there. But it is really not about watching. It is about sleeping. Hopefully the squad is well-accepted in the family. Sometimes they even make friends. A few soldiers keep watch, the rest of the squad catch up on sleep and relax for a change." -- Bryan Casler
"So we would go and drop the dismounted people at some house with an air conditioner, where they would kick in a door and hang out and drink tea with those people, while we would proceed with the vehicles and bide time out of visible range." -- Seth Manzel

What a bunch of slackers: that might be an appropriate response to all of this if there were some comprehensible and worthwhile thing that any of these people were supposed to be doing. But, as Jamail's book makes clear, when US soldiers in Iraq are not avoiding their duty they are engaging in harassment, abuse, torture, the murder of civilians, endless stress and trauma, and the risk of their own death and injury for no purpose that has been made clear to them. Soldiers quoted in the book point out that if their own nation were occupied they would certainly fight back just as the Iraqis do. In fact, these are soldiers who signed up to fight for a cause. Some of them fell for the post-9-11 propaganda and signed up thinking they would help defend the United States. Many of them signed up for economic reasons, but they also had a willingness to kill and risk death for a noble cause. Many of them tried to do so for years before losing faith. And what went away, other than their physical and mental well being, was not their courage or generosity. It was their ability to convince themselves they were risking their lives for any good reason.
As recounted in "The Will to Resist," which ought to be read by every American, avoidance of duty (or, rather, illegal orders masquerading as duty) in Iraq has often evolved seamlessly into refusal to obey. Jamail recounts incidents of individuals and squads refusing to obey orders. If you were sent out at the same time every night to the same place, and were losing more friends each time to predictable attacks, for no apparent reason, would you not at some point refuse to go out yet another time, at least without changing your path and timing? Most of these soldiers do not have any understanding that war is always a mistake. They are willing to fight a war if someone can explain to them what the purpose of it is, or what a victory would look like. But they have turned against this particular war, since nobody can explain it to them, and they have seen for themselves that what they do in it accomplishes no good.So, some soldiers refuse to load their guns, risking their own lives rather than kill. Others go AWOL. Others, indeed, turn against all wars and apply for conscientious objector status. Some leave the country, some go to jail, some go to court and win. All of these stories are found in this book. So is a rich collection of stories from Winter Soldier, the series of events organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War, at which veterans of the Iraq War have described what they did -- most of it far more shameful and painful than facing the charge of "slacker" from fat chicken hawks in air conditioned studios. Iraq Veterans Against the War turns five years old this week and continues to grow rapidly, as it should: http://ivaw.org
Other worthwhile organizations to join and support are described in "The Will to Resist," which includes a powerful foreword by Chris Hedges, and some excellent chapters on how veterans are trying to deal with PTSD, injuries, lack of income, and despair, the products of a war that kills more US troops through post-combat suicide than through enemy attacks. The resistance movement within the military to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is still not what it was during the Vietnam War. Soldiers today were not drafted away from lucrative careers. They are in the military because they do not have other options, and almost half of them have families to support. And soldiers are kept together in their units so that they will each fight out of loyalty to their buddies even if they all oppose the fighting. But, as Jamail discusses, soldiers who want to resist lack the same support from civilians that was provided during the Vietnam War. That's the rest of us. We have a duty to read these books, support the groups doing the work, build up the coffee shops near the bases, keep the military out of our schools, and offer our time to assist those willing to make a more courageous choice than that of simply obeying illegal orders.

This is Where we Take Our Stand - Webisode 3

Why We Fight from Displaced Films on Vimeo.

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You are now watching: Episode Three: Why We Fight
Flashback to January, three months before Winter Soldier. How do you bring hundreds of veterans to Washington DC, to tell their stories? An IVAW national planning meeting reveals sharp differences among the members. Is the point of Winter Soldier to show how these wars are hurting America, or the destruction America is bringing to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan? Is the goal to strengthen the military, or weaken it? Despite the differences, a deep unity is built because, as Geoff Millard declares, the bottom line is “No one can hear our stories and still support this shit.”

Book Review - The Will to Resist

This review of Dahr Jamail's Will to Resist, by David Swanson, was posted davidswanson.org, July 24, 2009

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A few words from U.S. troops in Iraq, all quoted in Chapter 1 of Dahr Jamail's brilliant new book "The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan":
"Oh yeah, we did search and avoid missions all the time. We would go to the end of our patrol route and set up camp on the top of a bridge and use it as an over-watch position. It was a common tactic. We would just sit there and observe rather than sweep. We would call in radio checks every hour and report that we were doing sweeps." -- Eli Wright
"Unit members would go and play soccer with Iraqi kids instead of going on patrol. I knew soldiers who learned to simulate vehicular movement on the computer screen, to create the impression of being on patrol." -- Josh Simpson
"Nearly each day they pull into a parking lot, drink soda, and shoot the cans. They pay Iraqi kids to bring them things and spread the word that they are not doing anything and to please leave them alone." -- Geoff Millard
"Our platoon sergeant, an E7, was with us and he knew our patrols were bullshit, just riding around to get blown up. We were at Camp Victory, at Baghdad International Airport. A lot of time we'd leave the main gate and come right back in another gate to the base where there's a big PX. They had a nice mess hall, and a Burger King. The BK is where we wanted to go and to the PX and look at DVDs and dirty magazines. We'd leave one guy at the Humvees to call in every hour, and we'd spend the full eight hours doing this." -- Cliff Hicks
"A big thing used to be squads putting up in some Iraqi's house for a day or two, just going there and staying. They insert themselves in a house covertly in order to watch a neighborhood without anyone knowing that they were there. But it is really not about watching. It is about sleeping. Hopefully the squad is well-accepted in the family. Sometimes they even make friends. A few soldiers keep watch, the rest of the squad catch up on sleep and relax for a change." -- Bryan Casler
"So we would go and drop the dismounted people at some house with an air conditioner, where they would kick in a door and hang out and drink tea with those people, while we would proceed with the vehicles and bide time out of visible range." -- Seth Manzel
What a bunch of slackers: that might be an appropriate response to all of this if there were some comprehensible and worthwhile thing that any of these people were supposed to be doing. But, as Jamail's book makes clear, when US soldiers in Iraq are not avoiding their duty they are engaging in harassment, abuse, torture, the murder of civilians, endless stress and trauma, and the risk of their own death and injury for no purpose that has been made clear to them. Soldiers quoted in the book point out that if their own nation were occupied they would certainly fight back just as the Iraqis do. In fact, these are soldiers who signed up to fight for a cause. Some of them fell for the post-9-11 propaganda and signed up thinking they would help defend the United States. Many of them signed up for economic reasons, but they also had a willingness to kill and risk death for a noble cause. Many of them tried to do so for years before losing faith. And what went away, other than their physical and mental well being, was not their courage or generosity. It was their ability to convince themselves they were risking their lives for any good reason.
As recounted in "The Will to Resist," which ought to be read by every American, avoidance of duty (or, rather, illegal orders masquerading as duty) in Iraq has often evolved seamlessly into refusal to obey. Jamail recounts incidents of individuals and squads refusing to obey orders. If you were sent out at the same time every night to the same place, and were losing more friends each time to predictable attacks, for no apparent reason, would you not at some point refuse to go out yet another time, at least without changing your path and timing? Most of these soldiers do not have any understanding that war is always a mistake. They are willing to fight a war if someone can explain to them what the purpose of it is, or what a victory would look like. But they have turned against this particular war, since nobody can explain it to them, and they have seen for themselves that what they do in it accomplishes no good.
So, some soldiers refuse to load their guns, risking their own lives rather than kill. Others go AWOL. Others, indeed, turn against all wars and apply for conscientious objector status. Some leave the country, some go to jail, some go to court and win. All of these stories are found in this book. So is a rich collection of stories from Winter Soldier, the series of events organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War, at which veterans of the Iraq War have described what they did -- most of it far more shameful and painful than facing the charge of "slacker" from fat chicken hawks in air conditioned studios. Iraq Veterans Against the War turns five years old this week and continues to grow rapidly, as it should: http://ivaw.org
Other worthwhile organizations to join and support are described in "The Will to Resist," which includes a powerful foreword by Chris Hedges, and some excellent chapters on how veterans are trying to deal with PTSD, injuries, lack of income, and despair, the products of a war that kills more US troops through post-combat suicide than through enemy attacks. The resistance movement within the military to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is still not what it was during the Vietnam War. Soldiers today were not drafted away from lucrative careers. They are in the military because they do not have other options, and almost half of them have families to support. And soldiers are kept together in their units so that they will each fight out of loyalty to their buddies even if they all oppose the fighting. But, as Jamail discusses, soldiers who want to resist lack the same support from civilians that was provided during the Vietnam War. That's the rest of us. We have a duty to read these books, support the groups doing the work, build up the coffee shops near the bases, keep the military out of our schools, and offer our time to assist those willing to make a more courageous choice than that of simply obeying illegal orders.

Shutting down the machine - The Tactics of Resistance in an All-Volunteer Military

This article, by Dahr Jamail, was posted to zNet, July 16, 2009.

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On May 1st at Fort Hood in central Texas, Specialist Victor Agosto wrote on a counseling statement, which is actually a punitive U.S. Army memo:

"There is no way I will deploy to Afghanistan. The occupation is immoral and unjust. It does not make the American people any safer. It has the opposite effect."

Ten days later, he refused to obey a direct order from his company commander to prepare to deploy and was issued a second counseling statement. On that one he wrote, "I will not obey any orders I deem to be immoral or illegal." Shortly thereafter, he told a reporter, "I'm not willing to participate in this occupation, knowing it is completely wrong. It's a matter of what I'm willing to live with."
Agosto had already served in Iraq for 13 months with the 57th Expeditionary Signal Battalion. Currently on active duty at Fort Hood, he admits, "It was in Iraq that I turned against the occupations. I started to feel very guilty. I watched contractors making obscene amounts of money. I found no evidence that the occupation was in any way helping the people of Iraq. I know I contributed to death and human suffering. It's hard to quantify how much I caused, but I know I contributed to it."
Even though he was approaching the end of his military service, Agosto was ordered to deploy to Afghanistan under the stop-loss program that the Department of Defense uses to retain soldiers beyond the term of their contracts. At least 185,000 troops have been stop-lossed since September 11, 2001. Agosto betrays no ambivalence about his willingness to face the consequences of his actions:

"Yes, I'm fully prepared for this. I have concluded that the wars [in Iraq and Afghanistan] are not going to be ended by politicians or people at the top. They're not responsive to people, they're responsive to corporate America. The only way to make them responsive to the needs of the people is for soldiers to not fight their wars. If soldiers won't fight their wars, the wars won't happen. I hope I'm setting an example for other soldiers."

Today, Agosto's remains a relatively isolated act in an all-volunteer military built to avoid the dissent that, in the Vietnam era, came to be associated with an army of draftees. However, it's an example that may, soon enough, have far greater meaning for an increasingly overstretched military plunging into an expanding Afghan War seemingly without end, even as its war in Iraq continues.
Avoiding Battle
Writing on his blog from Baquba, Iraq, in September 2004, Specialist Jeff Englehart commented: "Three soldiers in our unit have been hurt in the last four days and the true amount of army-wide casualties leaving Iraq are unknown. The figures are much higher than what is reported. We get awards and medals that are supposed to make us feel proud about our wicked assignment..."
Over the years, in response to such feelings, some American soldiers have come up with ingenious ways to express defiance or dissent on our distant battlegrounds. These have been little noted in the mainstream media, and when they do surface, officials in the Pentagon or in Washington just brush them aside as "bad apple" incidents (the same explanation they tend to use when a war crime is exposed).
But in the stories of men and women who served in the occupation of Iraq, they often play a different role. In October 2007, for instance, I interviewed Corporal Phil Aliff, an Iraq War veteran, then based at Fort Drum in upstate New York. He recalled:

"During my stints in Iraq between August 2005 and July 2006, we probably ran 300 patrols. Most of the men in my platoon were just in from combat tours in Afghanistan and morale was incredibly low. Recurring hits by roadside bombs had demoralized us and we realized the only way we could avoid being blown up was to stop driving around all the time. So every other day we would find an open field and park, and call our base every hour to tell them we were searching for weapon caches in the fields and everything was going fine. All our enlisted people had grown disenchanted with the chain of command."

Aliff referred to this tactic as engaging in "search and avoid" missions, a sardonic expression recycled from the Vietnam War when soldiers were sent out on official "search and destroy" missions.
Sergeant Eli Wright, who served as a medic with the 1st Infantry Division in Ramadi from September 2003 through September 2004, had a similar story to tell me. "Oh yeah, we did search and avoid missions all the time. It was common for us to go set camp atop a bridge and use it as an over-watch position. We would use our binoculars to observe rather than sweep, but call in radio checks every hour to report on our sweeps."
According to Private First Class Clifton Hicks, who served in Iraq with the First Cavalry from October 2003, only six months after Baghdad was occupied by American troops, until July 2004, search and avoid missions began early and always had the backing of a senior non-commissioned officer or a staff sergeant. "Our platoon sergeant was with us and he knew our patrols were bullshit, just riding around to get blown up," he explained. "We were at Camp Victory at Baghdad International Airport. A lot of the time we'd leave the main gate and come right back in another gate to the base where there's a big PX with a nice mess hall and a Burger King. We'd leave one guy at the Humvee to call in every hour, while the others stayed at the PX. We were just sick and tired of going out on these stupid patrols."
These understated acts of refusal were often survival strategies as well as gestures of dissent, as the troops were invariably undertrained and ill-equipped for the job of putting down an insurgency. Specialist Nathan Lewis, who was deployed to Iraq with the 214th Artillery Brigade from March 2002 through June 2003, experienced this firsthand. "We never received any training for much of what we were expected to do," he said when telling me of certain munitions catching fire while he and other soldiers were loading them onto trucks, "We were never trained on how to handle [them] the right way."
Sergeant Geoff Millard of the New York Army National Guard served at a Rear Operations Center with the 42nd Infantry Division from October 2004 through October 2005. Part of his duty entailed reporting "significant actions," or SIGACTS -- that is, attacks on U.S. forces. In an interview in 2007 he told me, "When I was there at least five companies never reported SIGACTS. I think 'search and avoids' have been going on for a long time. One of my buddies in Baghdad emails that nearly each day they pull into a parking lot, drink soda, and shoot at the cans." Millard told me of soldiers he still knows in Iraq who were still performing "search and avoid" missions in December 2008. Several other friends deploying or redeploying to Iraq soon assured him that they, too, planned to operate in search and avoid mode.
Corporal Bryan Casler was first deployed to Iraq with the Marines in 2003, at the time of the invasion. Posted to Afghanistan in 2004, he returned to Iraq for another tour of duty in 2005. He tells of other low-level versions of the tactic of avoidance: "There were times we would go to fix a radio that had been down for hours. It was purposeful so we did not have to deal with the bullshit from higher [ups]. In reality, we would go so we could just chill out, let the rest of the squad catch up on some rest as one stood guard. It's mutual and people start covering for each other. Everyone knows what the hell's going on."
Staff Sergeant Ronn Cantu, an infantryman who was deployed to Iraq from March 2004 to February 2005, and again from December 2006 to January 2008, said of some of the patrols he observed while there: "[They] wouldn't go up and down the streets like they were supposed to. They would just go to a friendly compound with the Iraqi police or the Kurdish Peshmerga [militia] and stay at their compound and drink tea until it was time to go back to the base."
As a Stryker armored combat vehicle commander in Iraq from September 2004 to September 2005, Sergeant Seth Manzel had figured out a way to fabricate on screen the movement of their patrol and so could run computerized versions of a search and avoid mission. As he explained:
"Sometimes if they called us up to go and do something, we would swiftly send computer reports that we were headed in that direction. On the map we would manually place our icon to the target location and then move it back and forth to make it appear as though we were actually on the ground and patrolling. This was not an isolated case. Everyone did it. Everyone would go and hide somewhere from time to time."
Former Sergeant Josh Simpson, who served as a counter-intelligence agent in Iraq from October 2004 to October 2005, said he witnessed instances of faked movement. "I knew soldiers who learned to simulate vehicular movement on the computer screen, to create the impression of being on patrol," said Simpson. "There's no doubt that people did it."
Saying "No" One at a Time
"There was nothing to be done," Corporal Casler says of his time in Iraq, "no progress to be made there. Dissent starts as simple as saying this is bullshit. Why am I risking my life?"
Sometimes such feelings have permeated entire units and soldiers in them have refused to follow orders en masse. One of the more dramatic of these incidents occurred in July 2007. The 2nd Platoon of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, in Baghdad had lost many men in its 11 months of deployment. After a roadside bomb killed five more, its members held a meeting and agreed that it was no longer possible for them to function professionally. Concerned that their anger might actually touch off a massacre of Iraqi civilians, they staged a quiet revolt against their commanders instead.
Kelly Kennedy, a reporter with the Military Times embedded with Charlie Company prior to the revolt, described the shape the platoon members were in by that time: "[T]hey went right to mental health and they got sleeping medications, and they basically couldn't sleep and reacted poorly. And then, they were supposed to go out on patrol again that day. And they, as a platoon, the whole platoon -- it was about 40 people -- said, 'We're not going to do it. We can't. We're not mentally there right now.'"
In response, the military broke up the platoon. Each individual involved was also "flagged" so he would not get a promotion or receive any award due.
To this day, troops in Iraq continue to be plagued by equipment and manpower shortages, and work long hours in an extreme climate. In addition, their stress levels are regularly raised by news from home of veterans returning to separations and divorces, and of a Veteran's Administration often ill-equipped and unwilling to provide appropriate physical and psychological care to veterans.
While no broad poll of troops has been conducted recently, a Zogby poll in February 2006 found that 72% of soldiers in Iraq felt the occupation should be ended within a year. My interviews with those recently back from Iraq indicate that levels of despair and disappointment are once again on the rise among troops who are beginning to realize, months after the Obama administration was ushered in, that hopes of an early withdrawal have evaporated.
With the Afghan War heating up and the Iraq War still far from over, even if fighting there is at far lower levels than at its sectarian heights in 2006 and 2007, with stress and strain on the military still on the rise, dissent and resistance are unlikely to abate. In addition to small numbers of outright public refusals to deploy or redeploy, troops are going absent without official leave (AWOL) between deployments, and actual desertions may once again be on the rise. Certainly, there's one strong indication that despair is indeed growing: the unprecedented numbers of soldiers who are committing suicide; the Army's official suicide count rose to 133 in 2008, up from 115 in 2007, itself a record since the Pentagon began keeping suicide statistics in 1980. At least 82 confirmed or suspected suicides have been reported thus far in 2009, a pace that indicates another grim record will be set; and suicide, though seldom thought of in that context, is also a form of refusal, an extreme, individual way of saying no, or simply no more.
According to Sergeant Simpson, here's how a feeling of discontent and opposition creeps up on you while you're on duty: The part of the war you're involved in, interrogating Iraqis in his case, "doesn't make any sense. You realize that the whole system is flawed and if that is flawed, then obviously the whole war is flawed. If the basic premise of the war is flawed, definitely the intelligence system that is supposed to lead us to victory is flawed. What that implies is that victory is not even a possibility."
After finishing his tour in Iraq, Simpson joined the Reserves because he believed it would grant him a two-year deferment from being called up, but he was called up anyway. In his own case, he says, "I thought to myself, I can't do this anymore. First of all, it's bad for me mentally because I'm doing something I loathe. Second, I'm participating in an organization that I wish to resist in every way I can.
"So," he says, "I just stopped showing up for drill, didn't call my unit, didn't give them any reason for it. I changed my telephone number and they did not have my address." Eventually, he reached the end date of his contract and managed to graduate from Evergreen State University in Washington. "I don't know if technically I'm still in the reserves," he told me. "I don't know what my situation is, but I don't really care either. If I go to jail, I go to jail. I'd rather go to jail than go to Iraq."
Unready and Unwilling Reserves
Sergeant Travis Bishop, who served 14 months in Baghdad with the 57th Expeditionary Signal Battalion -- the same battalion as Agosto, who served north of the Iraqi capital -- recently went AWOL from his station at Fort Hood, Texas, when his unit deployed to Afghanistan. He insists that it would be unethical for him to deploy to support an occupation he opposes on moral grounds.
On his blog, he puts his position this way:
"I love my country, but I believe that this particular war is unjust, unconstitutional and a total abuse of our nation's power and influence. And so, in the next few days, I will be speaking with my lawyer, and taking actions that will more than likely result in my discharge from the military, and possible jail time... and I am prepared to live with that.... My father said, 'Do only what you can live with, because every morning you have to look at your face in the mirror when you shave. Ten years from now, you'll still be shaving the same face.' If I had deployed to Afghanistan, I don't think I would have been able to look into another mirror again."
I spoke with him briefly after he turned himself in at his base in early June. He said he'd chosen to follow Specialist Agosto's example of refusal, which had inspired him, and wanted to be present at his post to accept the consequences of his actions. He, too, hoped others might follow his lead. (He and Agosto, now in similar situations, have become friends.)
Agosto, whose hope has been to set an example of resistance for other soldiers, sees Bishop's refusal to deploy to Afghanistan as a personal success and says, "I already feel vindicated for what I'm doing by his actions. It's nice to see some immediate results."
His actions, he's convinced, have affected the way his fellow soldiers are now looking at the war in Afghanistan. "The topic has come up a lot in conversation, with soldiers on base now asking, 'What are we doing in Afghanistan? Why are we there?' People feel compelled to bring this up when I'm around. Even the ones that disagree with me say it's great what I'm doing, and that I'm doing what a lot of them don't have the courage to do. If anything, the people I work with have now been treating me better than ever."
On May 27th, rejecting an Article 15 -- a nonjudicial punishment imposed by a commanding officer who believes a member of his command has committed an offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice -- Agosto demanded to be court-martialed.
According to Agosto, the Army has now begun the court martial process, but has not yet set a trial date. Bishop, too, awaits a possible court martial.
On June 1st, a day when four U.S. soldiers were killed in Afghanistan, Agosto told me in a phone call from Fort Hood, "I haven't had to disobey any orders lately. A sergeant asked me if it'd be okay if I had to follow orders, and I said no, and they didn't force it."
Agosto and Bishop are hardly alone. In November 2007, the Pentagon revealed that between 2003 and 2007 there had been an 80% increase in overall desertion rates in the Army (desertion refers to soldiers who go AWOL and never intend to return to service), and Army AWOL rates from 2003 to 2006 were the highest since 1980. Between 2000 and 2006, more than 40,000 troops from all branches of the military deserted, more than half from the Army. Army desertion rates jumped by 42% from 2006 to 2007 alone.
U.S. Army Specialist André Shepherd joined the Army on January 27, 2004. He was trained in Apache helicopter repair and sent first to Germany, then was stationed in Iraq from November 2004 to February 2005, before being based again in Germany. Shepherd went AWOL in southern Germany in April 2007 and lived underground until applying for asylum there in November 2008, making him the first Iraq veteran to apply for refugee status in Europe.
He, too, has refused further military service because he feels morally opposed to the occupation of Iraq. While he awaits word from the German government and is still technically AWOL, Shepherd is being supported by Courage to Resist, a group based in Oakland, California, which actively assists soldiers who refuse to deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan.
A counselor and administrative associate at that organization, Adam Szyper-Seibert, points out that "in recent months there has been a dramatic rise of nearly 200% in the number of soldiers that have contacted Courage to Resist." Szyper-Seibert suspects this may reflect the decision of the Obama administration to dramatically increase efforts, troop strength, and resources in Afghanistan. "We are actively supporting over 50 military resisters like Victor Agosto," Szyper-Seibert says. "They are all over the world, including André Shepherd in Germany and several people in Canada. We are getting five or six calls a week just about the IRR [Individual Ready Reserve] recall alone."
The IRR is composed of troops who have finished their active duty service but still have time remaining on their contracts. The typical military contract mandates four years of active duty followed by four years in the IRR, though variations on this pattern exist. Ready Reserve members live civilian lives and are not paid by the military, but they are required to show up for periodic musters. Many have moved on from military life and are enrolled in college, working civilian jobs, and building families.
At any point, however, a member of the Ready Reserve can be recalled to active duty. This policy has led to the involuntary reactivation of tens of thousands of troops to fight the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Lieutenant General Jack C. Stultz, the Chief of the U.S. Army Reserve and Commanding General of the U.S. Army Reserve Command, told Congress on March 3rd that, since September 11, 2001, the Army has mobilized about 28,000 from the Reserves. There have been 3,724 Marines involuntarily recalled and mobilized during that same period, according to Major Steven O'Connor, a Marine Corps spokesman. (According to Major O'Connor, as of May 2009, the Marines are no longer recalling individuals from the IRR.)
Ironically, under a new commander-in-chief whom many voters believed to be anti-war, the Army is continuing its Individual Ready Reserve recalls. "The IRR recall has not seen any change since Obama became president," Sarah Lazare, the project coordinator for Courage to Resist, says. "It's difficult to predict what the Obama administration's policy will be in the future regarding the IRR, but definitely they haven't made any moves to stop this practice."
Needing boots on the ground, according to Lazare, the military continues to fall back on the Ready Reserve system to fill the gaps: "Since these are experienced troops, many of them have already served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan." Lazare adds, "When Obama announced his Afghanistan surge, we got a huge wave of calls from soldiers saying they didn't want to be reactivated and to please help them not go."
The Future of Military Dissent
Right now, acts of dissent, refusal, and resistance in the all-volunteer military remain small-scale and scattered. Ranging from the extreme private act of suicide to avoidance of duty to actual refusal of duty, they continue to consist largely of individual acts. Present-day G.I. resistance to the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan cannot begin to be compared with the extensive resistance movement that helped end the Vietnam War and brought an army of draftees to the point of near mutiny in the late 1960s. Nevertheless, the ongoing dissent that does exist in the U.S. military, however fragmented and overlooked at the moment, should not be discounted.
T he Iraq War boils on at still dangerous levels of violence, while the war in Afghanistan (and across the border in Pakistan) only grows, as does the U.S. commitment to both. It's already clear that even an all-volunteer military isn't immune to dissent. If violence in either or both occupations escalates, if the Pentagon struggles to add more boots on the ground, if the stresses and strains on the military, involving endless redeployments to combat zones, increase rather than lessen, then the acts of Agosto, Bishop, and Shepherd may turn out to be pathbreaking ones in a world of dissent yet to be experienced and explored. Add in dissatisfaction and discontent at home if, in the coming years, American treasure continues to be poured into an Afghan quagmire, and real support for a G.I. resistance movement may surface. If so, then the early pioneers in methods of dissent within the military will have laid the groundwork for a movement.
"If we want soldiers to choose the right but difficult path, they must know beyond any shadow of a doubt that they will be supported by Americans." So said First Lieutenant Ehren Watada of the U.S. Army, the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse a combat deployment to Iraq. (He finally had the military charges against him dropped by the Justice Department.) The future of any such movement in the military is now unknowable, but keep your eyes open. History, even military history, holds its own surprises.

This is Where we Take Our Stand - Webisode 1

For Those Who Would Judge Me from Displaced Films on Vimeo.

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You are now watching: Episode One: For Those Who Would Judge Me
March 13, 2008: As hundreds of veterans and over a thousand supporters gather just outside Washington, DC for three days of testimony, the pressure is high and questions intense. How is the testimony verified? What will people think of veterans and soldiers for being here? What good will this do? Without hesitation Geoff Millard (US Army National Guard), Steve Mortillo (US Army), and Adam Kokesh (US Marine Corps) respond to “those who would judge me” with a clear purpose and their chilling stories.

IVAW Photo Portfolio Originally Published in the Guardian

Iraq veterans Geoffrey Millard, left, and Adam Kokesh inside the Iraq Veterans Against the War house, which is decorated with anti-war posters

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Former sergeant in the National Guard, Millard is now president of the IVAW Washington chapter

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Former sergeant in the Marine Corps Reserves, Kokesh also lives in the building, which is home to five activist veterans and a regular stream of like-minded visitors

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Milliard joined the National Guard when he was 17. After the 9/11 attacks, he was sent to New York to search incoming vehicles for bombs, then to Iraq

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The house is a hub of the anti-war community, where friends and supporters gather for weekly barbecues

IVAW in the News

This article, "G2: Men on a mission: In a rundown suburb of Washington DC, a group of anti-Iraq war protesters has set up home. But they are no ordinary activists - they are all veterans of the conflict. Daniel Nasaw talks to them", by Daniel Nasaw, was published in The Guardian (London), August 20, 2008

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The mock soldier's grave in the front yard, along with the bottles of urine in the refrigerator and the anti-war posters festooning the first floor, tell visitors this is not just another group house for politically minded Washington DC twentysomethings.
The bottles, says Adam Kokesh, a tattooed, muscular former US marine sergeant and prominent member of a community of virulently anti-war Iraq veterans based in the house, are to be tested for depleted uranium, a munitions component thought to be harmful to soldiers exposed to it.
The house, in a rundown neighbourhood of the US capital, is headquarters for Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), a group with more than 1,200 members across the country and on military duty in Iraq. It is also a flophouse for visiting and needy veterans, a "frat-house on steroids" in the words of one resident, and a friendly space where veterans can commune with like-minded comrades.
On a recent Sunday evening, I joined Kokesh, several other Iraq veterans, and a crew of other anti-war activists for a cook-out at the vets' house. They talked politics, shared war stories, drank beer and wine. Then, and over several other meetings, the members told me about the domestic situations peculiar to the group: the bottles of urine stored in the refrigerator, a member's inordinate rage at malfunctioning computer equipment, and a shared sense of purpose and experience that mitigates and outweighs the strife.
The members of the IVAW house are the newest incarnation of a long tradition of anti-war activism by US military veterans. They are the tattooed, web-savvy descendents of the Spanish-American war veterans who decried US torture of Filipino rebels at the turn of the 20th century, and the shaggy-haired Vietnam vets who tossed away their medals in protest. They offer legitimacy to the anti-war movement, show ing that peace activists aren't necessarily anti-military or motivated by knee-jerk opposition to George Bush. Some were against the war from the start, but had already joined up and hoped they could speed US involvement in Iraq to an end. Others were afraid to resist deployment or were unaware how to do so.
"The vet groups are our street cred," a California-based anti-war activist tells me at the group's barbecue. Medea Benjamin, co-founder of feminist anti-war group Code Pink, says the veterans' group appeals to the American glorification of the military, even within the anti-war movement. "People who have been part of a war that I consider immoral and illegal still have more legitimacy than people who were against the war from the very beginning and refused to fight in it," she explains, sitting in the vets' living room while her college-age cohorts chat with the veterans and eat hamburgers and sausages. "They command more of a sense of authority and more of a sense of understanding of what's actually happening on the ground. Generals who come out against the war are seen as more important even than Congress members who are against the war."
The house has become a centre of Washington anti-war activism, but it serves a different function for the five men who live there. "When you're coming out of the military, the one thing that you lose bigger than anything else is the camaraderie of your unit," says 27-year-old Geoff Millard in between bites of sausage and sips of root beer. "You've got family, you've got friends, but you don't have the people who have been there, and that's a huge thing. In this community we have that, whether they want to live here, or they want to stay a weekend, or they just want to come over and watch some TV for a little while. It's just a space for veterans."
A native of Buffalo, New York, Millard joined the National Guard when he was 17. After the 9/11 attacks, he was sent to New York City to search incoming vehicles for bombs. When the Bush administration began pushing for war with Iraq, Millard didn't want to go.
"Our military is trained to kill people and we're the bullies," he says. "I didn't sign up in the military to be a bully. I signed up to protect people from bullies. We started to talk about Iraq, and Iraq just didn't pass the smell test." In winter 2003, he marched with a group of Vietnam vets in a massive New York anti-war protest. He thought briefly about fleeing to Canada, but was afraid to desert. "I thought that if I resisted they would put me in jail," he says. "So I went to Iraq". He spent a year as an administrative aide to a general there in 2004.
Now a web journalist, Millard joined IVAW in December 2005, and co-founded the Wash ington chapter the following autumn. He and Kokesh had lived together in a small apartment, but wanted space for other like-minded veterans. The men moved into the Washington house in December.
The 50-member IVAW chapter, of which Millard is president, sub-lets the lower level, which was converted into comfortable office space decorated with anti-war posters. Considering it is occupied by a group of twentysomething bachelors, the house is remarkably tidy. The men share cleaning duties, dividing up chores on Sundays so the house will be clean for vets attending the weekly support group and visitors to their potluck dinner. "Most of us were NCOs in the military, so we're good at telling people to clean up shit," Kokesh explains.
Some of the men have jobs or are attending university, while others spend their days writing anti-war literature, working out, or travelling across the region to speak to anti-war groups, recruit other veterans and help organise new chapters. The attic and basement hold "berths" for dozens of visitors, and 43 guests bunked in the house during a March anti-war event.
The members don't merely provide food, drink and company. At the weekly "home-front battle buddies" support group in the basement of the house, the veterans talk over their war experiences, hash out problems adjusting to civilian life and struggles with the US veterans administration, and even discuss relationship troubles. The men, a rotating group of about five who live in the house, plus regular visitors from outside Washington, can also spend hours a day strategising and talking politics. Their tactics include "counter-recruitment" of young people sought by the military and sit-in style protests at government buildings.
Life in a house full of jittery veterans can be trying, they acknowledge. Routine domestic disagreements explode into rage. Many of them have trouble sleeping, and suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). "The PTSD is so thick in the air you can cut it with a knife," one tells me. They say they have all learned to recognise when one of their housemates is in the grip of an episode (symptoms differ in each, they say, with some becoming depressed and angry, others anxious, others restless).
Millard recalls that an uncooperative internet modem sent him into a fury, and when he tried to discuss the issue with his housemates, he could only yell and curse. He eventually threw the equipment across the room. "I had been seeing a girl for about two weeks at the time, and she was here, and that ended that relationship," he tells me, sitting in his book-lined den upstairs. But his housemates were more accommodating: "They let me flare up like that and they gave me that space, and then as I naturally came down of that, I was able to say 'I'm sorry, I was not thinking naturally.'"
Kokesh, a Santa Fe, New Mexico native, is working toward a master's degree in political management at George Washington University, and supports himself with modest speaking fees from addressing student and anti-war groups. He also spends more than an hour a day working out in a garage where he keeps weights and a computer. With his muscles, tattoos, shaved head, goatee and piercing eyes, Kokesh is an intimidating presence. A fluent, self-taught Arabic speaker, he served in a civil affairs unit in Iraq and was decorated for providing humanitarian aid to civilians during firefights.
While some vets prepare the food at a cookout, Kokesh works with other veterans and supporters in the basement on a speech he is planning to give at an upcoming rally. Though anti-war, Kokesh isn't a liberal. He describes himself as a libertarian, and supported Ron Paul in his bid for the US presidency.
The workshop devolves briefly into an impromptu political strategy session, as Kokesh compares the efficacy of what he calls "direct action" with "civil resistance", techniques such as blocking a major city intersections to call attention to their anti-war message. "If I have a conversation with a kid in high school and he decides he's not going to join the military, that's a direct action," he says. "A war resister inside the military is both. But that doesn't necessarily make it more effective. I would rather have 1,000 high-school students who would otherwise not join, than one person within the military resist. That's taking 1,000 bodies out of the system as opposed to taking one out."
Other participants in the discussion note the news value of a high-profile soldier refusing to redeploy to Iraq. The IVAW members who live in the house and visit it appreciate sharing space with people who have seen, first hand, the results of the US adventure in Iraq and who know how to manage war-traumatised veterans.
"I've to a certain extent found solace in it," says Nick Morgan, a bearded 24-year-old who was a combat engineer in Iraq. "I'm kind of an anxious person, I'm kind of antsy. I have a lot of quirks that make people uncomfortable. But being around cats like this, it's second nature. Nobody really notices it."
But it is their shared devotion to ending the war in Iraq and agitating for veterans' benefits and reparations for Iraqis that ultimately holds the house together, even when tensions are running high. "There's a certain environment that we're able to create here that is distinctly for veterans who have the freedom of mind to see that they've been lied to, that essentially a certain element of their service was for nothing," Kokesh tells me emphatically. "An environment that empowers them to live out their convictions".

Winter Soldiers Report For Duty - Adam Kokesh's statement before the Out of Iraq caucus

Sponsored by Congresswoman Jackson Lee
May 14th, 2008

Good morning. My name is Adam Kokesh and I served as a Sergeant on a Marine Corps Civil Affairs team in the Fallujah area. I now serve as a member of the Board of Directors of Iraq Veterans Against the War. Since our founding in the fall of 2004, IVAW has called for three things: the immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces from Iraq, full benefits for returning veterans, and reparations for the Iraqi people. We have over a thousand members, in 43 chapters, in 48 states, in Germany, in Canada, and in Iraq. We have members on active duty, in the Reserves, in the Guard, and in every branch of service. We are the only organization of veterans of the Global War On Terror that requires proof of service for membership. We take it as our duty to speak out, and to cut through the lies, spin, and propaganda that are being used to manipulate society into supporting a war that is not in our best interest as a nation. If America could see what the boots on the ground really thought of this occupation, it would not continue for another day. We are an organization of whistleblowers.
And like the other whistleblowers you will hear from today, we face many of the same challenges, but also a set of challenges that are unique to the military, because the military has a distinct power over service members. I joined the Marines for the challenges, so harassment was part of the bargain for me, but I never expected it to come for political reasons. When service members are in a combat environment, risking our lives on a regular basis becomes part of the bargain as well. The possibility of harassment becoming a matter of life or death, has always been very effective in silencing dissent.
Some military whistleblowers are trying to get accountability for a specific incident or to correct a particular injustice. Some of us are simply trying to tell our stories and portray things that to us are all too commonplace. The only people that do not support whistleblowers are the ones who are up to something. That we have faced the challenges we have, is a testament to the fact that someone is up to something in Iraq. Not only is the occupation immoral, illegal, and bad for America, it is fundamentally corrupt, and those that are benefiting from it do not want Americans to understand that reality.
While some service members who come to this conclusion, face legal consequences for resisting their direct participation in the occupation, some of us have faced unjust consequences for exercising the rights that are supposed to be guaranteed to us not just in the First Amendment of the Constitution, but under military law as well. Today you will hear from four members of Iraq Veterans Against the War who have experienced retaliatory harassment for exercising their rights in keeping with their consciences, and while honoring their oaths to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Geoff Millard served with the New York Army National Guard for nine years including a year in Tikrit. After coming home from Iraq and attending an anti-war event, he was made to fear for his life from his command. Mark Wilkerson served in Tikrit and Samarra with the 401st Military Police Company. When he came home, he decided to apply for Conscientious Objector status, but was threatened and harassed in such a way that he had no choice but to go AWOL when his application was denied. Thomas J. Buonomo graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy with a degree in Political Science and Middle East Studies and a minor in Arabic, then volunteered to cross-commission into the Army in order to support our ground forces. Shortly after qualifying as a Military Intelligence Officer, his security clearance was suspended, and he was involuntarily discharged for expressing views contrary to the administration. We will also be joined by attorney Mike Lebowitz, who served in Iraq as a paratrooper with the elite Pathfinder Company of the 101st Airborne Division, and is currently a JAG captain with the Virginia Army National Guard where he serves as a defense counsel for the 29th Infantry Division, providing legal assistance to troops subject to adverse action. In his civilian practice, he specializes in military free speech issues. Together, our testimony will make it clear that it is essential the No Fear Act II includes language that truly holds military retaliators accountable and serves as a deterrent for harassment. In addition to our oral statements, we will be submitting substantiating legal documents for the tribunal's records.
In my case, I was a member of the inactive reserves when I joined Iraq Veterans Against the War and participated in a guerrilla street theater action called Operation First Casualty. It was called that because it has long been said that the first casualty of war is the truth, and we wanted to bring some of the truth of what was going on in Iraq home to the American people in the form of a mock combat patrol through the streets of Washington, DC. Knowing that the Uniform Code of Military Justice does not apply to members of the inactive reserves, I knew that I was within my rights to wear certain uniform items in the execution of this street theater, because I was not representing myself as a member of the military. In addition to removing rank insignia and name tapes, our squad was surrounded by volunteers distributing fliers that described exactly who we were, and what we were doing.
My picture and name appeared in the Washington Post's coverage of the event, and I soon received an email of warning from Major John R Whyte of the Marine Corps Mobilization Command, who identified himself as my Investigating Officer and said, “As a member of the Reserve Component, until 18 JUN 2007, the law restricts your wearing of the uniform at certain events. Please call me or reply to this e-mail acknowledging your understanding of your obligations and responsibilities.” I replied by saying that he was wrong to investigate the political activities of an inactive reservist when as an active duty Major, he could be doing something to bring our fellow Marines home alive from Iraq, and used an expletive to express my displeasure with his waste of military resources. The next communication that I received from the Marines was a letter explaining their intent to charge me under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and separate me with an Other Than Honorable discharge, which theoretically would have disqualified me from any benefits that I had earned through my service. After a significant legal battle and extreme pressure brought to bear on the Marines as a result of the negative media attention, I was separated with a General Discharge, which theoretically would disqualify me from any education benefits, and theoretically make me liable for the money that I had previously received through the GI bill. Around the same time, Marines serving at the Marine Corps Mobilization Command called Cloy Richards, a two combat tour veteran in the inactive reserves who has an 80% disability rating, is using the GI bill to help get through college, and is dependent on the VA for treatment. They threatened to take all of that away if he did not stop protesting. They also tried to prosecute Liam Madden, another former Marine and member of the inactive reserves for making “disloyal statements.”
The way that the Marine Corps Mobilization Command came after me was illegal, the decision of the separation board was legally faulty, and it was a clear-cut case of political harassment. Although we were able to achieve what seemed like wrestling things to a tie, the Marine Corps was able to send two very strong messages: We don't want you speaking out against the occupation or even portraying the reality of the every day in Iraq, and even if you're in the inactive reserves, we can still control your fate. I spoke out within my rights, and was punished. To my knowledge, none of the officers responsible for this unnecessary waste of military resources, or for any other cases of retaliatory harassment against IVAW members, have ever been held accountable.

Shutting Down the Machine - Confidence in our Nation: Renewed

This Article, by Kristofer Goldsmith, was originally published on the IVAW website, June 8, 2008

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As many of you know by now, Matthis Chiroux has made his refusal to deploy to Iraq on the grounds that this is an Illegal Occupation, a very public affair. Matthis and I have been attempting to gain Congressional Members to come out in support of War Resisters... And things are going better than I could have imagined.
Two weeks ago Matthis and I came down to the DC IVAW Chapter house with a mission, an idea, and a plan. We were going to attempt to talk to Congresspeople from the Out of Iraq Caucus, and see if we could get them to come out in support of Matthis' decision not to go to Iraq.
Our first time in a Congressional building was for Winter Soldier on the Hill and the Whistle Blowers Testimonies. Neither of us had been working with the DC guys to set up these events . . . So basically, we hit the Hill completely clueless.
But with coaching and advice from Geoff Millard, we figured out that getting your foot in the Congressional door, figuratively and literally, was a lot easier than most people would assume. First of all, to all IVAW members who haven't at least met with their local congress people . . . What are you waiting for!? It is your RIGHT to speak with the representative who votes in YOUR NAME in the House of Reps. If your Congressperson doesn't know you exist, he or she may not know that there are Veterans who are against the Occupation of Iraq.
When I met with my Congresswoman, Carolyn McCarthy, last month on Long Island, it was the first time she ever heard of Iraq Veterans Against the War. Long Island has the most dense population of Veterans of all wars . . . But I was only the fourth Iraq Veteran who had ever contacted her office! As a Democrat who opposes the continuation of needless death overseas, she has been searching for a way to justify voting against funding. Now that she knows about me, she has an answer to the mindless masses of the Gathering of Eagles, who have a huge, very active group here on Long Island.
So moral of the story is -- Step One: Set up a meeting with your local Congressperson as a CONSTITUENT and representative of Iraq Veterans Against the War. Step Two: Build a working relationship with the Congressional Office's Veterans Contact. Pro-War or Anti-War, they need to hear our side -- in a respectful, professional manner. They know about the protests and rallies for peace set up by Code Pink and other activist groups, but we are the experts on Iraq and our organization has set a precedent with Congress and is building a respected reputation. Work with that in mind. Step Three: Make sure your Congressperson knows about Winter Soldier, both the March and May events. Testimony from Winter Soldier on the Hill is in the Congressional Record, so they have access to it. Directing the staffers to specific testimony on YouTube or IVAW.org is effective, I did it with McCarthy's office!
...Anyway, back to whats happening in DC-
Last week we met with various staffers, and eventually members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Out of Iraq Caucus. Most offices wanted us to meet with their Veterans contact or Scheduler to throw our pitch. Each meeting with staffers gave us experience and sometimes even direct advice towards sharpening our skills to present an argument, or "list of asks," to the Congressperson that they worked for.
Nicole, our own Dr. Scribe, took notes to help us keep track of everything we accomplished, and more importantly, everything we were learning. One night after a particularly hard-ball staffer meeting, we figured out that we needed to get everything on paper. So we set up a few dozen folders with all the essentials: Matthis' Statement/Refusal to deploy (and media coverage of that to add credibility and recognition), our own research of why it would help the Congresspeople to End the Occupation by supporting those who refuse orders on the grounds that the occupation inherently is illegal in nature, information about IVAW and Winter Soldier, and clear instructions on how Congress can help us.
By the end of our second week in DC we had spent time with Congresswomen Clarke, and Woolsey, and Congressmen Kucinich and Conyers. We got our foot in the door with a bunch of others too because we met with tons of staffers and they had interest in what we were trying to get across.
The most satisfying moment of all the time we spent in meetings came when we met with Chairman Conyers, and the moment Matthis said "I am refusing orders to deploy to Iraq on the grounds that this Occupation is illegal by international law, federal law, and Constitutional law..." and Congressman Conyers, the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee interrupted Matthis and said "You're right! I agree! It is illegal." We're on our way to getting Congressional support for war resisters, and as I said before, it's going better than I ever could have imagined. We, IVAW, are not only the Warriors Against the War, but are the very ammunition of the Congresspeople who want to end the war but just don't know how. By encouraging members or the House to come out and say they support those who refuse to deploy, we are breaking the chains of indentured servitude that the Military has wrapped around it's own "all volunteer force." While we don't expect legislation to come out in support of war resisters, what we're asking for is a commitment -- that members of Congress will truly SUPPORT THE TROOPS, ALL OF THE TROOPS, and not abandon those who refuse to take part in an illegal war which was based on Lies.
So, to other members of IVAW, and all our supporters, I have two requests:

First- help us fight, and raise the confidence of Members of Congress who want to end the war but don't know how. Make sure your Representative knows who you are, and what IVAW is, and what we stand for.
Second- see if you can come down to DC next weekend for Matthis' next press conference. Sunday, June 15th, is the report date for Matthis' forced deployment orders. On that day he will not be reporting for duty, but instead be in our nation's capital letting the world know that not every Soldier who is overseas is fighting by their own will. We, the members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, stand in solidarity and support of those who choose not to be used by a government who has betrayed its Veterans and Service Members.

SUPPORT GI RESISTANCE!